Post by Larry McCullough

...You better enjoy working on it. 

I call them ‘projects’ as that sounds better than ‘work’. If somebody says they are not working on their boat often, or doing projects, they are ignoring things or are filthy rich and have somebody else doing the work. For me, I enjoy doing the work - for the most part. I enjoy the projects where I am moving forward, adding something new (see Sonihull below) or a maintenance project that makes the boat look better, like varnishing that one strip of teak that is on our stern rail. Even changing the oil on the engines is, what’s the word I am looking for...fun?...no that’s not it, how about rewarding! 

I have had many boats over the years, and I have learned many things when it comes to maintenance and upgrades. Independence was a big upgrade from our prior boats which means the quantity of work and upkeep is multiplied. 

Our boat is a Nordhavn and there is a great owner’s group website that has many resources that are just a few clicks away. One of the best is an email that comes daily where people ask questions of other owners, or experts in the field, and they reply. They are then archived on the website. A great example of this is regarding Racor fuel filters and separators. When we traveled from Key West to Isla Mujeres on our way to Belize my Racors clouded up with sediment and needed to be drained a few times. The ocean was very rough which made unscrewing the bottom of the separator to drain very tricky. One day a person posted a picture of their solution, instead of the screw they installed a valve that could easily open the drain. I found the parts needed at a truck supply center and installed it myself. I could not just use supplies from the local Home Depot because the diesel would eat away at the fittings in a standard house plumbing system (see attached picture). 

We have all heard about clogged arteries, boats have them too. The systems that use salt water (engines, HVAC) over time get clogged with barnacles, calcium, Zebra mussels, etc. Our starboard engine had been running hot even after I changed the impeller. One day the Nordhavn email mentioned running a product called "Barnacle Buster” in the HVAC system once a year to clear out the buildup. I did further research, and it was recommended to also run it through the engine system due to the clogging of the heat exchanger that occurs over time. Since the engine was still running hot, I thought I would give it a try.  

I have said this in the past, I love my engine room. There is a tremendous amount of room in it. With Barnacle Buster you need to pour it into the raw water intake strainer after you closed the intake valve. With our boat this task is much easier than many other boats where a person would need to pump it into the strainer. I could not believe how expensive these systems were, some over $400. With our boat, and me being parasomnias, I was able to use gravity. But I needed to find a delivery system that could get the Barnacle Buster into the strainer fast enough for our 715 HP Cummins engines. I spent time searching the Internet for various options and I found a fuel can that has a hose coming out of the bottom and a trigger for opening the discharge. I also kept a hose next to me that I could turn on incase additional water pressure was needed. 

With the HVAC the fluid flow was fine, which gave me the confidence for the engines. There are engine on/off controls next to each engine which made the task easier and less stressful. With the engine at idle I added five gallons to each engine and then turned the engines off, let the Barnacle Buster do its job overnight. The next morning, I turned on the engines and out comes busted barnacles, calcium and other goodies. The attached picture explains it well. Barnacle Buster is all natural, and of course so were the barnacles, so even though it looks like some terrible debris is coming out of the exhaust it is all natural. The alternative would have been to pull the heat exchanger off the engine and let it soak in a tub full of Barnacle Buster, or a similar product, probably costing many thousands of dollars. I am glad to report that this project met with great success! On a recent trip we ran the boat at 90% of engine capacity and no overheating. Now if I could use some of that on my own arteries, I wouldn’t have to take that damn pill every morning. 

Impalers, no spell check, close, very close, “Impellers”. I had heard horror stories about replacing impellers, a knuckle busting job. A must do job that can be very difficult. When we had some great mechanics on our boat to go over the engines with me after the sale, they pulled off the impeller cover and gave them a look and said they were fine but didn’t pull them because of the work involved. Now, with one of the engines running hot, I thought it was time to replace them. The impeller is made of rubber vanes that are surrounded by a metal core that pumps raw water to the engine to keep it cool. The boat had extras on board when I bought it so I thought I would put them to use. I pulled the old one out, easy enough. When I attempted to put the new one in, I put soap on the rubber vanes to help slide it in easier, I also made sure that the vanes were oriented in the same direction as when I pulled them out. The dam thing wouldn’t go in! This project fun?...definitely no and not even close to rewarding. What is the problem, I could not understand? The old one and the new one looked the same...on the outside! After about 15 minutes I realized that the new impeller had 14 splines instead of 10 splines in the core. I had another new impeller on board and saw that one only had 10 splines and it slid in relatively easily making for a rewarding experience. Anybody need a 14 spline impeller? I have since ordered 2 extra 10 spline impellers to keep on board. 

Another project still fresh in my mind, probably because my shoulders send me a reminder occasionally, was back in Jupiter: washing; rubbing compounding; polishing and waxing the entire hull from the rub rail to the water line. Independence is 59 feet long, as a reminder it has two sides, that is 118 feet of washing, rubbing compounding, polishing and waxing (that is four different steps multiplied by 118 or 472 feet)! At Jupiter there was a floating platform that I was able to use to tackle the “project” which made it so much easier. “Easier”, probably not the correct word, how about “less difficult”. It was worth it though; the hull looks new again and the buffer I bought helped immensely. 

The current project I am working on is installing the Sonihull system. Sonihull is an ultrasonic anti-fouling system that is supposed to cut down on bottom cleanings by sending out a pulse 24-7 that hampers marine growth on the underwater hull, theoretically cutting down on bottom cleanings and haul outs. I will let you know in future post if it works or not. Installation is fairly straightforward, the difficult part is running the transducers to various parts of the inside of the hull. 

When Jamie and I came back to the boat after the Holiday Season I noticed water in the bilge below our Master Stateroom bathroom. Where did it come from, I thought, fresh water or salt water? I performed a very sophisticated high-tech test by placing my finger in the water and then tasting it, fresh water. The shower/sink sump pump is close by, I thought maybe the strainer was clogged coming from the shower. I pulled the strainer, looked disgusting but not clogged, cleaned it and replaced it. I then dried out the hull using a small hand pump and a sponge. The next morning water was back. The boat has small tunnels between bilge compartments, and I thought it might be coming from forward as opposed to aft. I pulled the carpet and hatches from the mid-stateroom and determined it was not coming from there. The water looked clean, well relatively clean, otherwise I would not have done the taste test, therefore I did not think it was coming from the black water holding tank. That left the A/C system which is underneath our bed. We pulled the mattress off and sure enough that was the case, but why? After further investigation, Jamie (great to have a wife that can help) and I determined that the plastic pan that surrounds the system to collect condensation had sprung a leak, but why?...the boat is not that old. I unbolted the A/C and gently raised it while Jamie slid the pan out. Where the water drains out of the pan there is an elbow joint that the drain hose attaches to. Apparently, at the factory when installing the system, they over tightened the elbow joint and cracked the plastic pan and after 4 years their patch job failed. Great being in Fort Lauderdale...the yachting capital of the world. I made some phone calls, got on my bike and had a new pan that we installed the same day. 

Along with my hearing, my smell is going. I can still taste things so it’s not COVID. Jamie on the other hand can hear and smell everything, poor thing! We have house fans in the boat which basically blow in fresh air from the outside, or in the case of the bathrooms vent the air to the exterior. Jamie noticed that a few of them were not working. I started digging around under cushions and identified the ones that were not working. We had spare fans on board (they look like computer fans). I pulled the ones out that were not working and checked to make sure they were getting electricity with a voltmeter, which they were. As I disconnected the bad fans, I noticed that they were clogged. Upon further examination, and more powerful reading glasses, I noticed that they were clogged with small bugs, mostly Mayflies. A reminder of all the bugs from the Great Loop. Perhaps not the souvenir you would want! A quick change out of the fans and they now are all working. 

Who needs balast when you have batteries. Independence has 16 large AGM batteries. 8 of them make up the “house battery bank” which powers: lights; fridge, electronics; etc. Each engine has 2 dedicated batteries, the generator has 2 along with the bow thruster and windlass at the bow of the boat. We have a battery monitoring system that tells us how much of the battery is charged and how much battery life you have left with your current consumption. It is a bad thing to let the battery charge go below 50%, so it is imperative to keep and eye on the monitoring system. Recently the monitor had just been showing a draw down and when we came back after a trip home the system showed a draw down to 15%, real bad. We were plugged into shore power and everything seemed to be working ok so I turned off the shore power and fired up the generator, within 5 minutes the battery was back to 100%, impossible to be charged that quickly. I thought the monitor might be bad and instead of paying $1,000 to have a tech tell me that, I replaced the monitor for $175. Sure enough, that fixed the problem, rewarding! 

Our plans now are to leave Fort Lauderdale in mid-March and go to the Bahamas for 2 months and then work our way up the East Coast all the way to Maine. Time to change all the oil and all the filters. As I always say to Jamie, “My work is never done”, aka, I own a boat!